


The Final Step

by Crowlows19



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pack, Sweet, non-graphic, old age death, old!derek, old!stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 14:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stiles took the final step that every human takes he left behind the love of his life. Letting him go was the single hardest thing that Derek would ever do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Final Step

Years later, when the kids asked, Stiles would come to say their first meeting had hardly been breathtaking. There was nothing fairy tale about how they came to be friends. Well, not Disney fairy tale at least. The Grimm Brothers were much more appropriate to describe their lives. Blood, gore, death, darkness. 

But Stiles had always been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it was just a tiny pinprick. A pinprick so far away that no one else would be able to hold out in their hope that they would ever reach it. And that was what Derek loved the most about Stiles. 

Derek had fought with Stiles for years before either of them would be able to admit that they could actually tolerate each other, much less love each other. Stiles had left and come back from college with a criminal justice degree and fresh out of the academy. Derek hadn't even known that Stiles was back in town until Stiles had walked up on him crouching over a dead body in the woods. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” he had said. Derek had been forced to hold back a moment of panic thinking a hunter had snuck up on him. Stiles’s voice had changed so much while he’d been away that Derek hadn’t recognized it. It wasn’t just a change in octave either. It was calmer; more self assured. 

“Stiles?” he questioned, blinking into the beam of Stiles’s flashlight.

“What are you doing here Derek?”

Derek was about to ask him the same thing when he noticed the badge hanging on Stiles’s belt. He was a state detective now, stationed in Beacon Hills until something else came along that required his attention. 

“There are teeth marks on her neck,” he said. “Fangs.”

“Is it an animal attack or an animal attack?” Stiles asked, stressing the repeat in his sentence. It was a blatant referral to how werewolf attacks were normally covered up. 

“I can’t tell,” Derek replied concerned that Stiles would take this as an opportunity to blame Derek. He had done so before and the two of them hadn’t parted on the best of terms. 

“Well, the lab should be able to tell,” Stiles said. “Hopefully.”

“I should leave,” Derek said, suddenly standing up and disappearing into the woods. He was a half mile away before he caught Stiles’s faint reply.

“Well, it was nice to see you too Sourwolf.”

00000

Derek loved to listen to Stiles tell the story of how they’d come to be. When Stiles would have all the Pack kids surrounding him on the floor, couches, and chairs of their living room Derek would listen calmly from another room in house. He didn’t like big crowds and he certainly didn’t like big crowds of children. But Stiles always had a story for them. He was always good with them.

“Did Derek work on the case with you?” little Jonathan asked his leg bouncing up and down because he had to pee but didn’t want to miss anything and thus elected to hold it in. 

“He did,” Stiles replied. “Reluctantly.” Derek smirked. That had been true. He hadn’t wanted to work with Stiles. He had finally managed to get the hyperactive, fuzz-ball out of his town and now he was back and with a gun and a badge. There was something about it that made Derek so terribly nervous. 

“But we caught the crazed Omega and Derek did the scary Alpha eyes and teeth thing,” Stiles continued dramatically, his voice rising and falling. “And we all know what that looks like.” The last part he half whispered and the children all oohed and squealed and giggled. Yes, everyone knew what it looked like. 

“And that’s the end of that story. What’s the next one?”

There was a sudden chorus of suggestions but Stiles always tried to give each kid a chance to pick a story. 

“What about you Leon?” Stiles asked a little boy in the back, who was too shy to speak up on his own. His family was new to the area and were still trying to integrate into the Pack. “What story do you want to hear?”

“Did Derek always love you?” he asked. Even as new as he was to the territory Leon was curious about the Alpha and his human mate. Alphas didn’t normally have human mates. Stiles had always been the odd one in any situation. His flailing limbs, obscure knowledge of comic books, and obsessive need to love everyone meant that he was one of a kind. Derek couldn’t imagine a world without it. 

“Not always, Leon,” Stiles replied and launched into his favorite story about how he had singlehandedly saved Derek from drowning at the bottom of a pool after being paralyzed by the kanima. Derek wasn’t overly fond of that story.

00000

The next story that Stiles told was requested by Katherine. She loved to hear the story of how Stiles had gotten Derek to go on a date. The detective had been trying to bring Derek in on a case. Stiles often went to Derek for help on a case even though he rarely needed it. He just wanted to see Derek.

Stiles was fond of telling the children that Derek wasn’t very good with feelings and that was why he had Stiles. It was basically the truth.

“What do you want?” Derek had asked when Stiles had showed up at the still destroyed Hale House. The place had only gotten worse since Stiles had been away. Derek didn’t live there but he refused to let it go. He haunted it. 

“I have a case.” Derek had lifted his eyebrow knowing that Stiles was playing him about all of these cases.

“I’m busy,” Derek said. “Isaac has a thing.”

“What thing?” Stiles asked, immediately curious. 

“He’s getting a new car.”

“Well, new car can wait, I have a murder.”

“You don’t need my help for that. I know you don’t. Why are you always here Stiles?”

“Seriously?” Stiles had asked, a look on his face that said that Derek was incredibly stupid. “I thought it was obvious.”

“What’s obvious?”

“I like you Derek. I like being around you.” Derek had stood there, completely still. The thought that someone would seek out his company because they liked it was a foreign concept to him. His Betas came to him because he was their Alpha. But Derek hadn’t really had friends since the fire. He didn’t know what to do with one anymore. 

“Why?” he had asked, stunned. 

“I don’t really know,” Stiles said sarcastically and Derek made a grumpy face. A face he usually saved just for Stiles. “I think its your sunny disposition.”

“Stiles!” Derek pressed wanting a serious answer. 

“Go to dinner with me.” Stiles demanded. Derek lifted an eyebrow. College had been good for Stiles. He was much more self assured and confident. He was determined to get a shot at what he wanted.

“Fine.”

“Great! I’ll pick you up Friday. Wear something nice. But sexy. Sexy’s always good.”

Derek rolled his eyes.

“Get out.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Derek growled. Stiles had his date, he could leave now. 

“I really do need your help on this case. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

That was the night that the two of them had really gotten to a point where they would become the couple they were today. It was a long road from when they’d first laid eyes on each other in the woods to where they would have a strong pack, three children, seven grandchildren, and fifty years of marriage.

00000

As they lay in bed that night, Derek listened to steady clicking of the machine that pumped oxygen directly into Stiles’s airways. He hated the sound of that machine. Stiles briefly lifted the oxygen mask to talk to him. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not the one with an oxygen tank.” Stiles gave him a look while trying to breathe deeply like the doctor had said. Derek knew that look well; it meant that Stiles knew Derek was avoiding the subject and he wasn’t having it. “I love you.”

Stiles’s eyes softened and he lifted the mask again.

“I love you too.”

He slept with the mask that night and Derek held his hand the entire time. Stiles’s hands used be smooth with a freckle on one of his thumbs. His nails would be chewed to the point of almost bleeding and the long fingers were slender and straight. But a long and dangerous life had changed those hands. The first three fingers on his left hand were bent funny from when they’d been broken running from hunters. There was a scar on his right palm from when he’d sliced it open cooking. They were wrinkled and arthritis had set in. 

The hands had changed so much, just like their lives but Stiles’s hand still fit perfectly into his. Their fingers laced together like they were designed for each other. And they always would. 

00000

Hospice was a special kind of hell. 

Even if it was in home Derek didn’t like it. If it hadn’t been for Scott, who had lost his wife a year ago, he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Scott ran interference with the nurses and the ass from the insurance company who had the nerve to talk about settlements. That man had been lucky to make it out of the house. Scott didn’t give him pity, just sympathy and strength. 

And on one sunny morning-the type of morning Stiles loved-the machines were turned off, his eyes closed, and Stiles slipped away. It took Derek an hour to let go of his cold hand. Scott eventually convinced him to let go.

“It’s time Derek,” he said softly kneeling at the Alpha’s side. “They have to take him to the funeral parlor. You need to let go of his hand.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to. Stiles loves you. He knows it’s not goodbye. Not really. You have to let him go.” 

And Derek finally did.

00000

At the time when Derek needed Stiles the most, Stiles wasn’t there. And he felt so lost and empty that he couldn’t even feel his wolf stirring when his grandson kissed his cheek or when his granddaughter handed him his newborn great-grandson. The one Stiles hadn’t been around to meet. 

Derek had loved him so deeply and completely that the spaces that Stiles left behind made him physically ache. After fifty years of loud noises and babbling, the loss of those things left him feeling as if his home wasn’t his own. He felt like he was haunting his own house. The Pack children came by every now and then but not like they had when Stiles was there to tell stories and watch movies. Derek didn’t do those things. That had been Stiles. 

Stiles-his other half-who did the things Derek wasn’t capable of doing because that was who he was. They had been a team. A perfect team. And now the team was broken. Because of old age. Derek hated the thought of old age. Because of his healing powers he would be able to last another ten years easily but the thought made him sick.

“I miss you Stiles,” he said standing in their closet months after the funeral, a box in his hand. It had been suggested to him that he should clean the closets a little bit. Maybe move to a smaller home. But Derek couldn’t do it. This was their life together. Stiles’s bright shirts and his flannel. Derek’s simple shirts that always smelled of Stiles because more often than not Stiles wore Derek’s shirt instead. He did it because he knew that Derek’s wolf would practically purr in contentment when he pulled the shirt over his head and caught a whiff of Stiles’s scent. 

Those scents were starting to fade and Derek wouldn’t be able to tear himself away from the house or anything in it until every last trace of Stiles’s had dissipated.

00000

Derek passed away a year and a half later. 

It hadn’t been like Stiles’s passing. Stiles had passed with his family surrounding him and holding his hand, supporting him in his final step in life and promising that they would take care of Derek when he was gone. Stiles had been particularly insistent that Scott not fight with Derek. Scott had kept his promise. 

No, Derek’s passing wasn’t anything like that. His was full of blood and pain. Like it was always destined to be. He had died fighting a troll. Stiles would have loved to know that trolls were real. He would have made a joke about bridges and then he would have asked Derek if the stench was clogging his nose. Later, when they had won they would have sat on the porch drinking beers all night and wait for the sun to rise. Eventually, Stiles would babble something stupid and Derek would scowl. Then Stiles would lean over and kiss his cheek and tell him not to be such a sourwolf. 

But Stiles wasn’t there and Derek hadn’t cared enough to fight for his life. The troll died and so did he. The forest floor was stained with his blood and the hands of his Betas were tense as they carried his body back to the house. He was buried next to Stiles in the family plot and at the next full moon his son inherited the Alpha for a hundred strong pack.

00000

When he came back to himself he was in a clearing in a forest. He couldn’t tell which forest it was and he didn’t much care. 

“Hey, Sourwolf,” Stiles said. “Why so sour?”

Derek ran to him, falling to his knees, and hugging him tightly around the middle.

“Am I dead?”

“Of course you’re dead, babe,” Stiles laughed running his hand through Derek’s thick hair. “The troll hit you too hard.”

“You saw that?”

“Yes, I’ve been stalking you the entire time. How does it feel?” Derek laughed, tears in his eyes. 

“I love you,” Derek said pressing his face into Stiles’s stomach and inhaling deeply.

“Do you love all the talking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love all the tripping?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love all the squishy humanness?”

“All of it.”

“Enough to spend eternity with it?”

“Forever.”

“I love you too, Derek. So much.”


End file.
